If NBA labor history is the gauge, there is still time to save Christmas.

Hey, at least the NBA didn’t cancel any more games yesterday, as some feared.

But if Thursday night’s messy negotiations breakdown that caused a federal mediator to shake his head and go home is an indicator, you might as well start counting the days to when pitchers and catchers report.

After near-gentlemanly negotiations throughout the labor dispute, talks blew up Thursday. With the players calling the owners liars and owners insisting they will yield no more, everybody left in a snit with no new talks scheduled. Federal mediator George Cohen walked away as the gap on the two main issues — the division of revenues and the salary-cap structure — seemed as insurmountable as ever. So with nothing else planned and federal mediation failing to produce a resolution, the season is in peril.

“Remember in 1998-99, we didn’t settle until Jan. 6, and we were playing the first week of February,” one general manager said yesterday. “So I’d say anything a month down the road is in danger. Beyond that, it’s too early. But you’ve got to get everybody back in the room first.”

There’s the rub. Or at least one on a laundry list of rubs, not the least of which is both sides seemed more apart than ever after three days of mediated negotiations. Players Association executive director Billy Hunter said his group will not resume negotiations with any pre-conditions — such as blind acceptance of a 50-50 revenue split, which he said the league demanded before talks resume.

Commissioner David Stern, who likely will pull the plug on more games early next week, was home flu-ridden. Last week, Stern, who already has whacked the season’s first two weeks, said his “gut” told him Christmas Day games would be canned if a deal were not reached this week. He also noted the big market-small market dilemma.

“The question we’re having a real argument about is whether the Lakers should be able to have a payroll of $110 million . . . and Sacramento has $45 million,” Stern said.

Hunter stressed some owners from larger markets — he named the Knicks’ James Dolan, Dallas’ Mark Cuban, Boston’s Wyc Grousbeck, the Lakers’ Jerry Buss and Miami’s Mickey Arison — want a season to be played, but smaller-market owners are “carrying the day” and are content to allow the lockout to drag on and threaten the entire season. The owners preach balance.

“The competitive issues are as big an issue for us as the economic issues are, and particularly for the small markets,” said Spurs owner Peter Holt, chairman of the labor relations committee. “We have been going back and forth for two years, and we’re still pretty far apart. . . . We want to get to the point where all 30 markets have an opportunity, nothing guaranteed, but an opportunity to be competitive and an opportunity to make a few bucks.”

Both sides feel they have compromised all they can.

“On the [revenue] split, we feel that some major economic relief does speak to competitive balance and an increased revenue sharing plan does speak to competitive balance because some of these smaller-market teams that are struggling in terms of revenue generation are propped up and stabilized,” Players Association president Derek Fisher said. “We made significant concessions on our really high [luxury] tax-paying teams.”

So let’s just get them back together and save Christmas.

“It could be tougher than it has been in the past to get back together,” Holt said.